Tuesday, June 17, 2008

WINNER, WINNER, WINNER!Stephanie you have won the prize for June 17th. Please email me your snail mail addy at my web site address, www (.) christie (at) christie-craig (.) com.Congrats and thanks for posting.P.S. Remember next week is the big prize giveaway. I'll be posting trivia questions about Weddings and everyone who gets them right will be entered to win the Pamper Me Like A Bride Basket.

I know, I know, you regular readers are probably saying . . . “But wait, we thought that it was Gemma who skirted close to that edge.” You do remember that blog, right?

Well, surprise, surprise, surprise. This just goes to show that you never really know someone until . . . well, until the person gets crazy enough to show her true colors. And what color is that, you ask?

It’s red.

Yup. My face was red with embarrassment. Not embarrassed enough to keep this a secret. Hey, lucky for you guys, I’m a tell-all, uhhh, “show-all” kind of person.

It happened several years back—before the sales of my latest novel releases. (I’m blushing just thinking about it.) I was desperately working on my novels. When I say desperately, I mean I was obsessed.

My thought process was that if I could write a bunch of books, then when I finally sold, I would have this great back list. (Hey, it worked out, but there’s a downside to being obsessed.)

You see, I was also juggling my day job—a very successful freelance career. I wrote for a large variety of magazines, I penned articles on: toilets, window treatments, stupid bank robbers, the warm fuzzy feelings of motherhood, tomato horn worms, Tom Selleck, and birth control for cats.

My point is, well there’s two points. First, if they’d pay me, I’d write it. Editors knew this, and I was constantly getting assignments just from my website alone. However, I did have some scruples. I mean, I had yet to take my clothes off for a public venue.

My second point is that I was very, very busy. So busy I ignored things like spam-looking emails. (Looking back, this is where my problems began.)

Anyway, I’d been getting lots of spamish-looking emails trying to sell me domain names. I had my domain name, Christiecraig.com. Why would I need another? Then I get a call from some really nice guy who worked for my internet server. “Did I know that I had let my domain name lapse?”

I’d thought I’d bought it for five years. It seems I’d only bought it for three. Hmm, so those emails hadn’t been spam? And now the domain-name place wanted to charge me hundreds of dollars to keep my name/web address. Since my website was on all my business cards which I passed out regularly to prospective editors/clients, I really wanted to keep it.

Thankfully, my internet guy said to just let it lapse and he’d buy it back the next day for the same minimal fee as before. Such a nice guy. I mean, normally, my husband would have taken care of all that, but he was in Mexico working for three weeks.

So I was back to work as usual. Plugging away on my books and meeting deadlines writing more articles about toilets. The next day, I get an email from a casual acquaintance. It read: “Wow, checked out your website. Saw a whole new side of you.”

Now, this person is known to have a whacky sense of humor, and I just assumed she’d read the newest article posted on my website about how cats were better than men. (But you know what they say about assuming, don’t you?)

Anyway, later that day I got a phone call from my brother in Florida. I was so stingy with my writing time, I almost didn’t take his call. But since he was supposed to show up in a few days with several of his motorcycle buddies to do some dirt bike racing, and they were all going to bunk at my house, I gave in and answered.

“Hey, sis,” brother said. And he had that tone about him. The same tone he used when he asked me to pull his finger. “Uh,” he continued, “I told my buddies that you were a writer and gave them your website to see what you wrote.”

“Yeah?” I didn’t have time to chitchat. I had books to write. “And?”

“And one of them just called. Let’s just say he’s very excited about “coming” now. Really wants to meet you.”

“Me?” I’ll be honest, I got concerned. But not for the right reasons. I mean, I thought the guy was probably either, A: a guy with a toilet fetish, B: really liked Tom Selleck, C: wanted to discuss feline sex. None of the above appealed to me.

Brother continued to laugh. And I got this feeling he was really enjoying this. Like it was payback or something. And yeah, this is the brother I found his magazines under his mattress and mentioned them to my mom. So it kind of scared me.

“Sis, have you checked out your website lately?” he asked.

Duh, I didn’t have time to check out my website. But I did it. I typed in christiecraig.com. And when it said I needed to be eighteen to enter, I got really scared, but when the first image popped up, I totally freaked. I mean I didn’t even check out Christie Craig’s face, mostly because the face wasn’t in the image.

I screamed, hung up on brother who was enjoying this way too much and called my internet guy who’d completely lost his “nice guy” status. “You said you would buy it back!”

“I tried,” he said. “But someone already snagged it, but don’t worry, I bought you Christie Craig with a hyphen.”

“Don’t worry? DON’T WORRY!!” I screamed again. “I’m now a porn star. I can’t be a porn star. Editors have my website.”

I heard him punching keys and then he . . . laughed. He laughed really hard and then said, “Wow, can I have your autograph.”

I hung up on him.

Then I called the man who always fixed my problems. I called my hubby in Mexico.

“Help. I’m a porn star.”

“You’re a what?”

“I lost my domain name. Another Christie Craig bought it. Now ChristieCraig.com is a porn site. What can I do? I’ve got to get them to take that down!”

I heard him typing, and he got really quiet. “Sweetheart,” he said calmly. “I’m afraid you can’t make them to do that.”

“But baby,” I pleaded. “People are going to think that’s me.”

He got quiet again, and said. “No, baby. They won’t think that. You got way more up on top than she does!” Then he . . . laughed. Really hard. And I hung up on him, too.

So there you have it. The day I got my hyphen . . . or the day I became a porn star. Moral of the story: Don’t let you domain name lapse!

Okay…it’s still June, so post a comment, tell me about something embarrassing that happened to you, or tell me if you seen Weddings on the bookshelves. Or just post a quick hello and you’ll be entered in a contest to win a Sexy, Suspenseful and Seriously Funny Tee-shirt and a pack of Christie Craig note cards. Come on guys, if I can tell you about my porn days, you can post a comment!

P.S. The “other” Christie Craig has since closed house. I’m thinking it’s because she had too many emails asking her to write about toilets.

37 comments:

I feel your pain, honey. I was all set to use my real name on my books, when a porn star decided to use it as her "stage name." Now if you google my given name, it's all pictures of her in poses that would make a sailor blush and page after page of links to her videos. Sigh.

Ah, well, that's life on the net, and your readers are sure to find you despite the hyphen!

I'll bet you're not snickering! And yes, learn from my experiences. They are less painful that way.

After the website fiasco, I emailed all my contacts and announced my new site . . . due to a domain name slip up. I know most people knew what it meant, and I'll bet you Christie Craig had a big day of hits on her website right about then, too.

I did have a few other people contact me about the site, but I just laughed my way through it.

Christie, I do so many embarassing things I don't know where to start. Most of them involve falling down though. I'm a big klutz.

Probably the worst was the day I wore a button down shirt that was a little too small. It popped open on me and it took me quite a while to realize it. No one ever told me. To this day I wonder how many people I flashed.

Priceless. I don't have anything quite so public. However, my family never lets me live down the day I ran into a glass door. Yep, I was young and trying to beat my sister outside of our hotel. Unfortunatley, she was having trouble with the lock. Extremely unfortunate, that the handle and lock were the only way to tell the door was still closed. It was some of the cleanest glass I have ever seen and sturdy.

I agree with Keri and must have blocked out what I've done but also remember what my husband has done like running out of gas on the way to our wedding and announcing it to the entire church when he came in half and hour late!

He ran out of gas on the way to your wedding? You should write that up and enter it in my contest going on at Dorchester.

Below is the info.

Crime Scene Christie

Win a "Pamper Me Like a Bride" Basket from Christie Craig

Weddings Can Be Murder Contest:

Do you have a heart-warming story or amusing faux pas about a wedding or falling in love?

If so, share your story and you could win a “Pamper Me Like A Bride” basket from Christie Craig.

Basket includes: a promotional Sexy, Suspenseful and Seriously Funny T-shirt, chocolate, candles, sensuous lotions and soaps, and a pack of Craig’s own note cards. The winner and runners-up will be posted on Dorchesterpub.com as well as on Christie Craig’s website. Winners will be chosen at random and notified the last week of June.

Hi Christie - I enjoyed reading your post. :) I would feel embarrassed too about your original web address especially people you know, but you at least have it fixed with a new one. I haven't looked at it since I'm at work and I don't want that to show up here. LOL! That would be 1.) inappropriate and 2.) embarrassing.

I was separated from my ex-husband at the time but he would often stop by and help out with things around the house I had moved into. Meanwhile, I had become friends with a man down the street with two young girls (he had boys too but by a different woman and the girls spent more time with him - and at my house) who I would often loan my videos to. Well, the ex had come over to mow my lawn and I had decided to sunbathe in the nude. Long story short, without my knowledge or consent, my ex video'd me sunbathing on our video camera. A day or so later I loaned out a video to my neighbor friend. A day or so after that, my house was broken into and my video recorder was stolen.

My house had been broken into and things had been stolen and all I wanted to know was - where was the video he'd recorded me in the nude??? He said he'd recorded it on the tape I'd loaned out to the neighbor!!! Turns out it wasn't on that tape so to this day I have no idea what happened to that video. For all I know, I could be famous somewhere (but then again, when all was said and done, I believe it was my ex-husband that broke into my house...but you never know).

I'm not about to tell my most embarrassing moment. However, I will talk about seeing your book at Hastings in Conroe, TX. I bought the only copy, then went looking for the woman-in-charge who nearly panicked when I told her that this author went to three printings with the last book and I just bought your last copy. She started tickety-tacking on her computer when I asked if she'd ever had you there for an autographing. "Well, no, it seems I haven't. And I want to." I told her I'd give the author a call and have her get in touch. She wanted to know if I was your publicist. "Well, kinda." LOL

Oh my, Christie--I'm SO sorry this happened to you, but I couldn't help laughing at your horrible predicament. (Yes, I'm a terrible, terrible person.) But I'm glad you're able to laugh, and too bad for that other Christie, eh? What was that saying? She who laughs, lasts :)

It does seem as if we should have certain rights to our own names. However, I recently got an email from a Christie Craig who also lives in Texas, (Don't think she's the Porn star) and she saw my name on Dorchester's site and shot me an email to say hello.

Here's the thing about buying expired domains and why you're likely to lose it once it expires.

First of all, aged domains, meaning domains that are over 4 years old, are valuable because Google considers older domains more authoritative. This makes them useful in many ways to online marketers, even if they're personal names.

Because of this, there is a very active market in domains that are expiring. Sites like Freshdrop.net provide sortable lists of these domains. You can place a buy order on the about to expire domain you want so that the minute it expires it's transferred to you.

The Crime

The authors of this blog are hereby charged with writing Killer Fiction novels responsible for spontaneous outbursts of laughter in public places, uncontrollable swooning over larger-than-life heroes, and the deaths of countless fictional villains.

The Evidence

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